Plus you seem to be arguing that humans don't enjoy killing each other? It's what we do best.
Uh, no, it's not. I don't believe there's any other predator that can live with so little violence with the kind of population densities humans manage in our cities. That's why we took over the planet.
exactly. the average human being probably sees less violence in his whole life than the average wild animal sees in a day. or maybe week.
but we still ump to it as a solution for stuff.
The fact that we had daily body counts in Vietnam kinda argues against that.
No, that just shows that journalists needed something to talk about. Regularly reported body counts weren't driven by the military, they were ordered by politicians pandering to the media.
How else you gonna keep score? nobody would watch a football game if there weren't points awarded
Obviously you've never seen Robot Jox.
I have a movie poster of it hanging in my video room. I have it for the same reason that one of the senior execs at Cadillac has a picture of the Cimmaron hanging in his office, lest we forget...
If we aren't killing people, what the hell is the point of war?
It sounds crass and nasty. But if we have manned engines of war fighting other unmanned enginnes of war, there is no point.
Because everyone else will catch up. It won't always be unmanned on people, all will eventually have dronish devices.
Be cheaper to run simulations and the best one wins.
My idea, turn it into a spectator sport. Revive big dreadnaughts and battleships, etc.; automate/remote them and have them pound the crap out of each other offshore far enough to be safe, but close enough to see. If that's impossible, then we can just TV it. People would pay to see it, live or on TV. Winner gets to brag they won the war.
That would be preferable to buying from online "Canadian" pharmacies, which aren't that at all but mostly fronts for Russian organised crime. You'll be shipped generics from India, not Canada. It's not as bad as it sounds because they depend on repeat customers so they work pretty hard to keep customers happy (you generally get the real deal, your credit card won't get ripped off, etc), but it's still taking a bit of a gamble.
I live in Canada. I refute what you wrote. I have generic medication. It was not manufactured in India or Russia, but in quality controlled labs here in Canada. And since there are about a half dozen major pharmacy chains, these organizations do not want to be sued for providing harmful medication. Ergo, they validate the generics before allowing them in their pharmacies.
The result of having generics is to cause the originators to moderate their selling prices. If my supply of one generic is $10.00, the non-generic might be sold at $12.00 (a max of 20% markup over generics.)
Come to Canada and buy your medication, or find a partner living at the border who will take your prescription to the Canadian pharmacy. Just pay him for the service, which would include the cost of the medication.
i think what he was saying was that actual canadian pharmacies are OK, (i know that for a fact) but that the guys who spam you with "canadian pharmacies" aren't canadian, and probably not pharmacies.
No one is asking YOU to go; if you don't like it, fine, don't go, but don't take away the freedom of those who want.
Leftists...
Uh, are you saying you are volunteering to go, or are you volunteering to pay? Or are you saying that those who want to go are leftists? Makes sense, they'd be going on the public's dime.
If a homeless guy walks into your office, rubs shit in his hair, proclaims himself a god, and asks you to follow him, would your line of reasoning be "Well, he COULD be crazy...but I had better follow him anyway, because I could just be being too pessimistic"?
Let's leave the Republican presidential candidates out of this.
Eh sorry to double-post, but there's another aspect to health insurance that complicates things.
Basically, if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every single time you got an oil change or put gasoline in your tank, you'd file a claim and make a co-payment. If homeowner's insurance worked that way, you'd file a claim and make a co-payment every time you re-shingled your roof, repainted your house, or replaced the mulch in some landscaping.
In every other instance, insurance is for rare and catastrophic events only. It's not something you use on a regular basis every time you perform what would be called routine maintainence in any other context. It's one reason contributing to why health insurance is so expensive.
indeed, medical coverage is not insurance any more. in other countries it's "health plan" or "sickness fund" or something. one thing that makes it different from car insurance is that your maintenance of your car has very little effect on your ability to avoid a crash, and vice versa, the expensive consequences of not changing your oil ever are not covered by insurance. whereas as you yourself pointed out, a lot of the worst medical expenses are avoidable a priori. so, do you spend $75 for a checkup out of pocket to avoid the insurance company spending a ton of money on you later? or, a related question, does it make sense for the insurance company to spend a lot of money managing your high blood pressure through your working life, when the savings that eventually come down the line will most likely be enjoyed by Medicare?
In the case of you without insurance, you join the ranks of the scum of society by virtue of passing off the shared responsibility onto everyone else.
How exactly does that work if the person pays in cash?
how much cash to do you have, exactly? you realize that the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical costs, for people who DO have insurance?
But some people don't need that protection. Namely those who take care of themselves. Sure, there's always a slight risk, but it's one I'd be willing to take. Of course, it's irrelevant now in my life because my job pays for my insurance, but before I had this job, I'd rather have no insurance than lay for supporting the scum of society's medical bills.
and when you get run over by a bus; would you become one of the scum of society with your medical bills paid for by others, or would you choose to die in the gutter without benefit of treatment?
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
Sure, but when you smoke two packs a day, or when the doctor tells you you're 50 pounds overweight and you keep hammering the buffets, shoveling fried food into your corpulent mouth, and not getting any significant exercise, well then we're no longer talking about "unpreventable", are we? That's not the same thing as driving down the road, having a deer jump out in front of you that no one could have seen in time, and getting injured in the crash.
Yes they can apply surcharges and rate some people as much riskier than others, but the entire concept of insurance is much better suited for the latter case than it is for the former. What a lot of people want is to appease their sense of justice by having some assurance that those who are at least attempting to be healthy are not forced to subsidize those who blatantly aren't.
A huge number of people think it's "inconvenient" they can't have everything they want with no downsides. They can't claim ignorance and they're setting themselves up to learn a hard lesson. The adults who understand that decisions carry consequences -- and make their choices accordingly -- don't want any part of the results. That's what I mean by a sense of justice. Whether you agree with it or not, that's where the concern about precisely how the insurance is implemented is coming from.
well i messed that reply up. let's try again. you realize that the much maligned high deductibles decouple the bad risky folks who ring up $1500 of bills a year from the good careful ones who have like one $75 checkup per year, because the insurer doesn't pay for either. Of course, that screws the people who have birth defects or MS or cystic fibrosis or asthma, but screw them, they should have been more careful to get born into a healthy body.
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
Sure, but when you smoke two packs a day, or when the doctor tells you you're 50 pounds overweight and you keep hammering the buffets, shoveling fried food into your corpulent mouth, and not getting any significant exercise, well then we're no longer talking about "unpreventable", are we? That's not the same thing as driving down the road, having a deer jump out in front of you that no one could have seen in time, and getting injured in the crash.
you realize that the much maligned high deductibles decouple the bad risky folks who ring up $1500 of bills a year from the good careful ones who have like one $75 checkup per year, because the insurer doesn't pay for either. Of course, that screws the people who have birth defects or MS or cystic fibrosis or asthma, but screw them, they should have been more careful to get born into a healthy body.
Yes they can apply surcharges and rate some people as much riskier than others, but the entire concept of insurance is much better suited for the latter case than it is for the former. What a lot of people want is to appease their sense of justice by having some assurance that those who are at least attempting to be healthy are not forced to subsidize those who blatantly aren't.
A huge number of people think it's "inconvenient" they can't have everything they want with no downsides. They can't claim ignorance and they're setting themselves up to learn a hard lesson. The adults who understand that decisions carry consequences -- and make their choices accordingly -- don't want any part of the results. That's what I mean by a sense of justice. Whether you agree with it or not, that's where the concern about precisely how the insurance is implemented is coming from.
It's more the fault of insurance being a scam for those who take care of their bodies and health. To stay in business, insurance companies must pay out less than they take in. This means for 50% of those insured, it's a scam. And in fact, the numbers are probably higher than 50% because a small percentage of people disproportionately need medical care.
Anyone who pays insurance is paying for those who eat fast food every day, pop out babies yearly (different fathers, if they even know the father), abuse drugs, take risky behaviors (speeding, excessive drinking, fighting), and their idea of exercise is walking to the fridge to get another beer. Assuming you're not a fuck up in life, insurance is pointless. Even if you have one expensive hospital visit per ten years, you'll save more by not paying insurance for those ten years and investing the saved money and then paying for the hospital visit in cash.
And now thanks to the wonderful Obamacare, we're all forced to purchase insurance. This drives up the price for everyone and discourages healthy habits. Great job Obama and his Democrat cronies!
Medical reform is needed in the US, but something like Obamacare has only made things worse than before.
I've personally seen a 3 million dollar medical bill. (well, not the original, I admit). if you can save that much from ten years of not paying insurance premiums, i would like you to adopt me.
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
you're talking to somebody who undoubtedly believes that Obama invented the concept of insurance and is a socialist and is funneling money to his bosses on Wall St.
Shockingly, AWS allows you to configure your servers in an insecure manner. Clearly, the cloud must be insecure.
Well, at it's essence, "the cloud" means "someone else's servers". This being the case, it should be abundantly clear that there is no magic there. If you use "someone else's servers in an insecure manner, it's not the someone else that is at fault. Even Amazon tacitly admits as much. Ever tried to get them to sign a Business Associate Agreement (a statutory requirement when you let a third party handle records covered by HIPAA regulations)? They will, but only after you've satisfied them that your use of their platform is sufficiently secure. It's a cinch that Systema didn't have a BAA with Amazon. Guess who's going to get fined?
wouldn't people with a little skepticism at least encrypt their files before uploading them, even with something trivial like zipping them with a password?
correction: i treat stupid people with tons of disrespect. is there a better approach to dealing with morons?
There are at least two better approaches. First, say nothing. Second, say something kinder.
You are correct with respect to those who have sadly had moronitude thrust upon them by an unkind fate. Those who, however, choose moronitude coupled with aggression for the sheer unbridled joy of being an asshole deserve no such tolerance.
"you think the kid bought a clock to school intent on getting arrested to give his father media exposure"
Yes, absolutely. And you took the bait. The father is a well known media whore.
which you know, from reading less well known media whores. but I'll bite. give us the list of things the father has done which cause you to brand him as a media whore, what media picked up his whorish doings before he hit the news in this context, or any other thing that might resemble a scrap of evidence for your preordained conclusion you cribbed from Pam Geller.
Really? I initially thought the kid had a kit clock or something more innovative. When you find out he took the guts out of a commercial clock and put it in a box and to boot he is 14? I was tearing things apart at half his age. Tying this to stem is interesting even with reports that the stem issue is pretty bogus. Take the things he did to an airport and also claim you invented it -- they should rightly give you a heck of a hard time. Then look at his father. The whole thing wreaks of a publicity stunt for a 3rd Sudan election....
Uh, all the brighter kids have already learned not to rock the boat at school, don't bring in any projects to show the teachers, don't stand out in any way, just hunker down and let the Great Leveler chop off the heads of the kids who stick theirs up.
"One of the Planned Parenthood videos shows "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.' "
— Carly Fiorina
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I talked to a Viet Nam vet about this and he laughed at me. He claimed the round made a real mess of anyone it hit.
so does a paintball. (just kidding)
Plus you seem to be arguing that humans don't enjoy killing each other? It's what we do best.
Uh, no, it's not. I don't believe there's any other predator that can live with so little violence with the kind of population densities humans manage in our cities. That's why we took over the planet.
exactly. the average human being probably sees less violence in his whole life than the average wild animal sees in a day. or maybe week.
but we still ump to it as a solution for stuff.
The fact that we had daily body counts in Vietnam kinda argues against that.
No, that just shows that journalists needed something to talk about. Regularly reported body counts weren't driven by the military, they were ordered by politicians pandering to the media.
How else you gonna keep score? nobody would watch a football game if there weren't points awarded
Obviously you've never seen Robot Jox. I have a movie poster of it hanging in my video room. I have it for the same reason that one of the senior execs at Cadillac has a picture of the Cimmaron hanging in his office, lest we forget...
Hey, it's better than Pacific Rim.
If we aren't killing people, what the hell is the point of war?
It sounds crass and nasty. But if we have manned engines of war fighting other unmanned enginnes of war, there is no point.
Because everyone else will catch up. It won't always be unmanned on people, all will eventually have dronish devices.
Be cheaper to run simulations and the best one wins.
My idea, turn it into a spectator sport. Revive big dreadnaughts and battleships, etc.; automate/remote them and have them pound the crap out of each other offshore far enough to be safe, but close enough to see. If that's impossible, then we can just TV it. People would pay to see it, live or on TV. Winner gets to brag they won the war.
or even recommend a summer vacation to Canada
That would be preferable to buying from online "Canadian" pharmacies, which aren't that at all but mostly fronts for Russian organised crime. You'll be shipped generics from India, not Canada. It's not as bad as it sounds because they depend on repeat customers so they work pretty hard to keep customers happy (you generally get the real deal, your credit card won't get ripped off, etc), but it's still taking a bit of a gamble.
I live in Canada. I refute what you wrote. I have generic medication. It was not manufactured in India or Russia, but in quality controlled labs here in Canada. And since there are about a half dozen major pharmacy chains, these organizations do not want to be sued for providing harmful medication. Ergo, they validate the generics before allowing them in their pharmacies. The result of having generics is to cause the originators to moderate their selling prices. If my supply of one generic is $10.00, the non-generic might be sold at $12.00 (a max of 20% markup over generics.)
Come to Canada and buy your medication, or find a partner living at the border who will take your prescription to the Canadian pharmacy. Just pay him for the service, which would include the cost of the medication.
i think what he was saying was that actual canadian pharmacies are OK, (i know that for a fact) but that the guys who spam you with "canadian pharmacies" aren't canadian, and probably not pharmacies.
Taking a tip from Hitchhiker's Guide, we need to send the middle management and financial types up there first to get things organized. All of them.
John F Kennedy perfectly told the world WHY we should do hard things. We do them not because they are easy, but because they are hard
That explains Marilyn Monroe.
No one is asking YOU to go; if you don't like it, fine, don't go, but don't take away the freedom of those who want.
Leftists...
Uh, are you saying you are volunteering to go, or are you volunteering to pay? Or are you saying that those who want to go are leftists? Makes sense, they'd be going on the public's dime.
If a homeless guy walks into your office, rubs shit in his hair, proclaims himself a god, and asks you to follow him, would your line of reasoning be "Well, he COULD be crazy...but I had better follow him anyway, because I could just be being too pessimistic"?
Let's leave the Republican presidential candidates out of this.
we gave up on the moon then? did a little joyriding, decided it wasn't much of a vacation spot?
who's there?
diesel
diesel who?
diesel probably pass emissions now.
Eh sorry to double-post, but there's another aspect to health insurance that complicates things. Basically, if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every single time you got an oil change or put gasoline in your tank, you'd file a claim and make a co-payment. If homeowner's insurance worked that way, you'd file a claim and make a co-payment every time you re-shingled your roof, repainted your house, or replaced the mulch in some landscaping. In every other instance, insurance is for rare and catastrophic events only. It's not something you use on a regular basis every time you perform what would be called routine maintainence in any other context. It's one reason contributing to why health insurance is so expensive.
indeed, medical coverage is not insurance any more. in other countries it's "health plan" or "sickness fund" or something.
one thing that makes it different from car insurance is that your maintenance of your car has very little effect on your ability to avoid a crash, and vice versa, the expensive consequences of not changing your oil ever are not covered by insurance. whereas as you yourself pointed out, a lot of the worst medical expenses are avoidable a priori. so, do you spend $75 for a checkup out of pocket to avoid the insurance company spending a ton of money on you later?
or, a related question, does it make sense for the insurance company to spend a lot of money managing your high blood pressure through your working life, when the savings that eventually come down the line will most likely be enjoyed by Medicare?
In the case of you without insurance, you join the ranks of the scum of society by virtue of passing off the shared responsibility onto everyone else.
How exactly does that work if the person pays in cash?
how much cash to do you have, exactly? you realize that the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical costs, for people who DO have insurance?
But some people don't need that protection. Namely those who take care of themselves. Sure, there's always a slight risk, but it's one I'd be willing to take. Of course, it's irrelevant now in my life because my job pays for my insurance, but before I had this job, I'd rather have no insurance than lay for supporting the scum of society's medical bills.
and when you get run over by a bus; would you become one of the scum of society with your medical bills paid for by others, or would you choose to die in the gutter without benefit of treatment?
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
Sure, but when you smoke two packs a day, or when the doctor tells you you're 50 pounds overweight and you keep hammering the buffets, shoveling fried food into your corpulent mouth, and not getting any significant exercise, well then we're no longer talking about "unpreventable", are we? That's not the same thing as driving down the road, having a deer jump out in front of you that no one could have seen in time, and getting injured in the crash. Yes they can apply surcharges and rate some people as much riskier than others, but the entire concept of insurance is much better suited for the latter case than it is for the former. What a lot of people want is to appease their sense of justice by having some assurance that those who are at least attempting to be healthy are not forced to subsidize those who blatantly aren't. A huge number of people think it's "inconvenient" they can't have everything they want with no downsides. They can't claim ignorance and they're setting themselves up to learn a hard lesson. The adults who understand that decisions carry consequences -- and make their choices accordingly -- don't want any part of the results. That's what I mean by a sense of justice. Whether you agree with it or not, that's where the concern about precisely how the insurance is implemented is coming from.
well i messed that reply up. let's try again.
you realize that the much maligned high deductibles decouple the bad risky folks who ring up $1500 of bills a year from the good careful ones who have like one $75 checkup per year, because the insurer doesn't pay for either. Of course, that screws the people who have birth defects or MS or cystic fibrosis or asthma, but screw them, they should have been more careful to get born into a healthy body.
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
Sure, but when you smoke two packs a day, or when the doctor tells you you're 50 pounds overweight and you keep hammering the buffets, shoveling fried food into your corpulent mouth, and not getting any significant exercise, well then we're no longer talking about "unpreventable", are we? That's not the same thing as driving down the road, having a deer jump out in front of you that no one could have seen in time, and getting injured in the crash. you realize that the much maligned high deductibles decouple the bad risky folks who ring up $1500 of bills a year from the good careful ones who have like one $75 checkup per year, because the insurer doesn't pay for either. Of course, that screws the people who have birth defects or MS or cystic fibrosis or asthma, but screw them, they should have been more careful to get born into a healthy body. Yes they can apply surcharges and rate some people as much riskier than others, but the entire concept of insurance is much better suited for the latter case than it is for the former. What a lot of people want is to appease their sense of justice by having some assurance that those who are at least attempting to be healthy are not forced to subsidize those who blatantly aren't. A huge number of people think it's "inconvenient" they can't have everything they want with no downsides. They can't claim ignorance and they're setting themselves up to learn a hard lesson. The adults who understand that decisions carry consequences -- and make their choices accordingly -- don't want any part of the results. That's what I mean by a sense of justice. Whether you agree with it or not, that's where the concern about precisely how the insurance is implemented is coming from.
It's more the fault of insurance being a scam for those who take care of their bodies and health. To stay in business, insurance companies must pay out less than they take in. This means for 50% of those insured, it's a scam. And in fact, the numbers are probably higher than 50% because a small percentage of people disproportionately need medical care.
Anyone who pays insurance is paying for those who eat fast food every day, pop out babies yearly (different fathers, if they even know the father), abuse drugs, take risky behaviors (speeding, excessive drinking, fighting), and their idea of exercise is walking to the fridge to get another beer. Assuming you're not a fuck up in life, insurance is pointless. Even if you have one expensive hospital visit per ten years, you'll save more by not paying insurance for those ten years and investing the saved money and then paying for the hospital visit in cash.
And now thanks to the wonderful Obamacare, we're all forced to purchase insurance. This drives up the price for everyone and discourages healthy habits. Great job Obama and his Democrat cronies!
Medical reform is needed in the US, but something like Obamacare has only made things worse than before.
I've personally seen a 3 million dollar medical bill. (well, not the original, I admit). if you can save that much from ten years of not paying insurance premiums, i would like you to adopt me.
You don't understand insurance. The whole point is that you're paying a fixed premium to eliminate a risk. You're paying for certainty. Without health insurance, you risk that some unpreventable medical problem makes you go into crippling debt for the rest of your life. That can happen regardless of how healthy you are.
you're talking to somebody who undoubtedly believes that Obama invented the concept of insurance and is a socialist and is funneling money to his bosses on Wall St.
The bigger story would be that Trump had a barber.
Oh no, that hair is definitely styled.
Shockingly, AWS allows you to configure your servers in an insecure manner. Clearly, the cloud must be insecure.
Well, at it's essence, "the cloud" means "someone else's servers". This being the case, it should be abundantly clear that there is no magic there. If you use "someone else's servers in an insecure manner, it's not the someone else that is at fault. Even Amazon tacitly admits as much. Ever tried to get them to sign a Business Associate Agreement (a statutory requirement when you let a third party handle records covered by HIPAA regulations)? They will, but only after you've satisfied them that your use of their platform is sufficiently secure. It's a cinch that Systema didn't have a BAA with Amazon. Guess who's going to get fined?
wouldn't people with a little skepticism at least encrypt their files before uploading them, even with something trivial like zipping them with a password?
correction: i treat stupid people with tons of disrespect. is there a better approach to dealing with morons?
There are at least two better approaches. First, say nothing. Second, say something kinder.
You are correct with respect to those who have sadly had moronitude thrust upon them by an unkind fate. Those who, however, choose moronitude coupled with aggression for the sheer unbridled joy of being an asshole deserve no such tolerance.
"you think the kid bought a clock to school intent on getting arrested to give his father media exposure"
Yes, absolutely. And you took the bait. The father is a well known media whore.
which you know, from reading less well known media whores.
but I'll bite. give us the list of things the father has done which cause you to brand him as a media whore, what media picked up his whorish doings before he hit the news in this context, or any other thing that might resemble a scrap of evidence for your preordained conclusion you cribbed from Pam Geller.
Really? I initially thought the kid had a kit clock or something more innovative. When you find out he took the guts out of a commercial clock and put it in a box and to boot he is 14? I was tearing things apart at half his age. Tying this to stem is interesting even with reports that the stem issue is pretty bogus. Take the things he did to an airport and also claim you invented it -- they should rightly give you a heck of a hard time. Then look at his father. The whole thing wreaks of a publicity stunt for a 3rd Sudan election....
Uh, all the brighter kids have already learned not to rock the boat at school, don't bring in any projects to show the teachers, don't stand out in any way, just hunker down and let the Great Leveler chop off the heads of the kids who stick theirs up.
"One of the Planned Parenthood videos shows "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.' " — Carly Fiorina